Diablo III Interview - making Hardcore hardcore, the no LAN issue, and much more

Interview: We recently got to sit down with Jay Wilson, lead dev on Diablo III, and pitched some burning community questions his way...

Last week, we got to sit down and have a good chat with Jay Wilson, Lead Developer guy on Blizzard's upcoming Diablo III. He's a great guy, and was super-passionate about the game - especially for a guy who'd just flown all over the place (twice to Korea, oddly) just to get to Sydney and get grilled by a bunch of game journos.

Previously, we'd also posted to our forums and gathered a mess of community questions for Jay, figuring that if there was stuff the die-hard fans of the series didn't know, then they'd be good topics to cover.

And here's what we got!

[once_i_was_a_maggot] What is there to do at end game?
Well, one of the things we focused on with Diablo, these have all been cooperative games; they've always had a server/client architecture. For Diablo 2, its end-game was always about adding multiple difficulties, but the problem is that player power eventually overwhelms the challenge of the game, to the point where the only point of going on was sheer tenacity. A player good say 'Look, I've made it to level 99!", which is, like, crazy dude... It was a time investment, but one without any real challenge or fun.

So one of the things we focused on for Diablo 3 - and we weren't interested in making super long gruelling levelling up process - what we wanted was, the fun stuff, searching for gear, and fighting against monsters who are challenging. So we created a fourth difficulty that we call Inferno that is ALL max-level. Max-level for a player is level 60, and so all the monsters at the start of Inferno are level 61, in Act Two they are level 62, in Three and Four they're level 63. And there are items that ONLY drop at level 61, at level 62 and so on; and they're not small number! There's a whole tier of armour in each one.

So even to be able to play viably in Inferno, you're going to have to play and fight in Hell for a little while, to get your items up to the quality so that you'll be able to fight through. And then to move from Act to Act you'll need to do that. We just wanted to take the idea of what was fun about Diablo, and make it challenging so that it would stay fun, and put the the time investment into more combat and loot-hunting, and less into meaningless time-investment to prove that you're more committed than your friends.

[Gharphield] There's been a lot of backlash from the community in regards to the need for a contact internet connection during gameplay, which Blizzard have explained is purely so that Character / Item building is done in a legit fashion, but many have claimed is more so for DRM control. Is this Blizzards direction for all future releases? And will LAN play ever be part of another Blizzard game ever again? (This was an epically long question, so we might have paraphrased it a bit...)
You know, every project is different - and for us, we're focused on trying to solve some of the issues that Diablo 2 had. The reason why we've moved away from LAN play towards online was that we felt the experience that we could provide for players would be FAR better if they were online. We see it as a natively cooperative game, and we had a lot of problems with people in Diablo 2 playing the game offline and not realising that there even was an online component; or, once they discovered there was an online component, not being able to transfer their character over to the official Battle.net. That was a break-point for a lot of people, and they just left the game. Those are bad problems that we wanted to fix.

Diablo 2 also had a lot of security problems, and a lot of them were related to the fact that it's a server/client architecture where gave players the server; so it was very easy to hack that server. It's a lot harder to hack a server that you don't have.

Security's probably one of the biggest criticism's of Diablo 2, so we felt it was one of the things that it was important to try and fix.

[mudg3] Cows - where are they?
There's cows in there I think... somewhere...

Actually, there is a REALLY big easter egg in the game, but I'm not going to tell you what it is...

[neowulf] There have been a number of comments made about the skills interface. Could you provide some clarification on Blizzards thoughts on the interface design? Some have suggested it was done to make the interface easier to navigate for the future console port.
The interface has been changed so players can understand the combat system more. One of the things, or criticisms, that we had on the skills system from our more dedicated players really comes from the fact that they ARE more dedicated, or more savvy, players; they've really learnt a lot about the game's structure. What we found time and time again, internally, when we put even very hardcore players in front of the game, was they would not know how to interact with all the systems. They'd say 'It feels like there's a way that you want us to play, but you're not giving me any hints as to what that is.' It's almost like they're saying 'If I could put the skills in categories I'd be able to understand them.'

Well, hey, we have those; when we designed the classes and the combat model, every class had these different categories of skills. Some of them were really hard categories, like defensive skills, or movement skills, or AOE skills; some of them were more soft, like single target versus area damage. So when we showed people internally our backend categories, a lot of people were like 'Oh, now I get what you're trying to do - why aren't you showing that to the player?'

It comes back to this kind of core philosophy that we have at Blizzard; what we really want to get away from is what we call 'the test', which is putting a skill, or putting anything in a system in front of the players, that there's a right answer for... but where we're not going to help them find it. I think some of our more dedicated, more hardcore users say that that's alright, that's where the fun is. But I actually don't think that's the case; I think the fun is in playing the game, not working out how to play it.

That said, I think there's an enormous amount of capacity in the game for crazy builds, to try and actually break the conventions of the combat model. We've given a lot of power to the player to strain it, and test it, and to come up with whacky combinations.

To me, that's what's fun. There's nothing wrong with understanding the categories to begin with; so you take all that, and take all the challenges of making a game that is... you know, we make games that are very hardcore, but we still want them to be approachable, and it's one of those situations where you're never going to make both camps completely happy.

But I think that'll change once people can actually play the game. There's a lot of stuff going on right now on the forums where our community members will say we've really got to address this problem, or whatever, you know... they're just excited. They just want the game to come out, and they're looking for anything to talk about, or to debate or argue; anything they can, because they just want to play the game.

In fact, one of the great things about Blizzard is that it's really easy for us to put is in our customers shoes (stage whisper) because we ARE them (/stage whisper). We're right in the same situation when one of our favourite games is about to come out, we're the same ones, pounding on forums, saying 'You've ruined the game!', and then it comes out, and we're all like, 'Yay!' and all's forgotten!

You've got to remember, as a developer, that all that feedback comes from love.

Join our site to get stuck in with comments and discussions with other passionate readers and tech fans,
and stay up to date with the latest news and reviews through our range of newsletters.

Email*

* Email address required

* Invalid Email address

I have read and accept the privacy policy and
terms and conditions and by submitting my email address
I agree to receive the PC & Tech Authority daily newsletter and receive special offers on behalf of PC & Tech Authority, nextmedia and its valued partners.
We will not share your details with third parties.

Please check your email

A confirmation email has been sent to your email address - SUPPLIED EMAIL HERE. Please click on the link in the email to verify your email address. You need to verify your email before you can start posting.

If you do not receive your confirmation email within the next few minutes, it may be because the email has been captured by a junk mail filter. Please ensure you add the domain @pcauthority.com.au to your white-listed senders.